Panting heavily, I tore off my blindfold and started to
sprint for my life up the beaten path in the hot, sticky
village of Bonao.
Pause.
Rewind.
Envision nineteen American teenagers hiking up a
riverside trail in a remote village of the Dominican
Republic. Having just jumped off four different 30 foot
waterfalls, my life-altering adventure aspect of the day
had been consummately fulfilled, or so I had thought.
It felt like 1,000 degrees. My hiking backpack was
sticking to my sweaty tank top. My partner, Joey, tied
a black bandanna over my eyes. Holding onto Joey’s
shoulders, I was blindly being led up and down steep,
rocky hillside, over fallen logs and slippery streams to
encourage trust building.
After a while, the tension subsided. I loosened my
steel-like grip on Joey’s shoulders and the butterflies in
my stomach seemed to be disappearing one by one.
All of a sudden, I started to hear screams coming from
behind me. Worried, I asked Joey quickly what was
going on. Concerned only with getting home, he told
me not to
worry, and
we kept on
walking.
After
a
moment I
started to
hear exactly
what people
w e r e
shouting.
“ V a c a
malo, vaca
malo!”
is
all I heard.
It sounded
like
the
l o c a l
children
w e r e
screaming
f r o m
behind us.
Now, really
concerned, I turned to Joey a second time as I heard
one loud yell above all the rest “Take off your blindfolds
and RUN!”
My trip leader sounded frantic. I immediately tore off
my blindfold only to see not more than 100 feet behind
us, a mad bull charging up the path. Heart pounding,
I, along with 18 other astounded kids, screamed bloody
murder as I started to run, stumbling blindly up the
path.
Realizing there was no way to outrun the bull, I yelled
at my peers to veer off the road in front of a deteriorating
shack. Two Dominican children somehow grabbed
a hold of the bull’s rope and held it down some ways
behind us.
Thinking we were safe, we started to
cautiously walk back to the road. As soon as we stated
hiking up the path again, the bull tore out of the hands
of the kids and started charging again.
Realizing that for the second time that day, I was in
mortal peril, I once again starting tearing up the path.
Blood rushed to my head and drowning out all the
noise, one thought was all I heard. “This could actually
be the end of my life.” Adrenaline pumping, I ran faster
than I ever had in my life, all the way up the last hill
until we reached a bamboo bridge, teetering perilously
ahead of me. Looking behind, I saw I was safe once and
for all, as several men had taken control of the bull. My
trip leader calmly told us to put our blindfolds back on,
and I walked across that swaying half-mile long bridge
blindfolded, feeling more safe and relieved than ever.

Tale of TWO homecomings

Graphic by Kyle Kavanaugh

Contrasting stories of
homecomings
past
Saloni Godbole

percent of us went to college. When you go on a date,
in my day, boys wore a coat and tie. Girls wore girdles and things, we didn’t even have pantyhose. We (below) Kim Johnson, a
couldn’t wear jeans and stuff like that to school.
Bloomfield Hills
It was all about class, flats, pleated skirts with
high
sweaters that matched,” says Huffman.
news senior advisor
However, some things seem universal to
Two Bloomfield Hills girls are preparing for high schools regardless of the decade.
“I remember I wore my first black
homecoming. One matches
dress to homecoming. It was a black
her velvet dress to her pearls
velvet dress. I always had
and hops into a Bonneville
a steady boyfriend but
my parents didn’t want
convertible. A decade later,
me to “go steady”. And
the other decides to skip the
everybody had a brand
“preppy” dance for an anti-war
new car because it was
rally.
Michigan after all. The
On the 50th anniversary of
coolest car was the
homecoming, students celBonneville convertible, and the coolest
ebrate in accordance with the
thing to do was go to
culture of the times, as students of
Ted’s on Woodward
the past have done.
and cruise,” says
Ginny Huffman, from the BloomHuffman.
field Hills High School class of
Kim Johnson’s experience,
like Huffman’s, epitomizes the
1963 (pictured in above graphic),
time period.
elaborates on the homecoming Kim Johnson
“1967-68 was a huge time of
Bloomfield
Hills
alum
experience.
transition. The class was divided
“I was voted both sophomore
into jocks, frats, and hipand junior princess,” says Huffman. “It was pies. The Vietnam War was going on; both
kind of interesting that I made it onto the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
court, I was very surprised because I was were assassinated that year. If your
pretty studious. In those days, the football birthday was drawn as an
early draft number
players voted who the homecoming court it was almost guarwas. I also have a charm bracelet-you got a anteed that you
charm in those days and one says sophomore would not be startprincess and one says junior princess given ing college.

1967-68 was a
huge time of transition. The whole hippy
thing was about being “anti-fashion”.
Dressing up for
homecoming was
something that the
“preps” did

to me by the school.”
According to Huffman, high school in the
late 50s and 60s was a different world.
“We had one school building, and 80 plus

After solving secrets in Rome and ending
enigmas in Paris, Robert Langdon is back. And I
couldn’t care less.
Dan Brown’s third entry in the overwhelmingly
popular Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol,
is for all intensive purposes the same as the first
two (Angels and Demons and the insanely popular
The Da Vinci Code).
For the third time, Robert Langdon, a Harvard

professor and symboligist, is somehow roped into
solving ancient mysteries against the clock with a
beautiful woman at his side.
The familiarity of the plot is the book’s biggest
disappointment. Take the events of the previous
books and move them to Washington D.C.
Essentially a National Treasure for adults. Nothing
new or exciting.
The Lost Symbol takes place several years after
the events of The Da Vinci Code. Langdon is in
Washington D.C. trying to crack (or keep safe, it’s
never really clear) the secrets of the Freemasons.
The secrets, known as the Ancient Mysteries, if
found will supposedly contain wisdom that will
bring a second Renaissance.
Langdon is joined on the mission by Dr. Katherine

Soloman, Peter Soloman, Warren Belamy, and
numerous other characters. The problem is,
however, despite physical appearances the
characters share one boring personality. There
is no character development at all, and much of
the action’s logic is hard to swallow. The few
times Brown gives us insight into his character’s
thoughts, they all think the exact same way.
They all occasionally say a witty one-liner, are
doing what they believe right, and all have the
annoying habit of sounding like encyclopedias
despite danger (note to self- if people are dying
around you, don’t spend ten minutes explaining
ancient myths.)
Also, I’m 99 percent sure that Brown wrote
the character Warren Belamy, more than once

described as an “elegant African-American
man,” specifically for Morgan Freeman to
play in the inevitable movie adaptation.
The villain of the story, Mal’akh, is
ridiculously cliché to the point of comedy.
His brief introduction in the prologue
actually made me laugh. Brown tries so
hard to make Mal’akh mysterious and
intimidating that he is a caricature of a
comic-book villain.
Brown’s only literary trick is the big, overthe-top,
shocking
twist. Like millions
see BOOK
of people, I read Da
Vinci and was waiting
for
the
surprise.